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This is really good news, Sick. Thank you.
there is no reason now for Prodigy not to be back up and running. There should be plenty of mulberry to do a nice run.
Hi Jazz,
RNAi is interesting and something I hadn't thought of for silencing the native gene.
My only counter argument would be that Kim specifically said "Knock-out" so it would seem to me the gene is gone and no need to slice up the RNA. It might also be possible that the RNAi has off-target effects and accidently targets the spidersilk RNA considering they both are very repetative and may be similar. But who knows. Everything is clear as mud right now.
I think Kim is really terrified of competition and never volunteers info that can give them any inkling of their process. Eventually we will see if that was the correct approach.
For what it's worth, I still think these new advancements were done using zinc fingers. Kraig Labs licensed this technology and it is still the premier gene editing tool. Much better at targeting any gene compared to CRISPr.
Kimwipes are used in almost every lab. We have many boxes of them in my lab.
To draw a connection between a box of standard lab wipes sitting on a lab bench in a stock photo is a little far fetched.
There are many great possibilities for what tech will be announced tomorrow. I think the kimwipes angle is a reach and a half.
The "Click Here" button, however, is likely going to be the link to the portal tomorrow once the page is live. But thats just a guess.
Yes. It looks like a big box of kimwipes or some other lab paper product
I'll also add that it might even be better to bet on the field. Meaning, it may be more probable that the breakthrough is something that has never been discussed on this board. We'll know soon enough.
You're right, Rayo. I think it's funny that so many here criticized Kim for temporarily shutting down production and furloughing staff on March 19th. What would have happened if Kim kept the facility running and then had to abruptly stop at midnight tonight? how many silkworms would have been hatched and then left to die in the middle of a cycle? Maybe Ken Le knew what was coming down the pipeline and made the prudent move in order to not get caught off guard?
Much of this is out of Kim and KBLB's control, but it doesn't stop those who want to place harsh judgment on every step the company makes through this extremely fluid "black swan" situation.
Don't forget:
1) Protein production platform replacing bacteria, yeast, mammalian, and other insect protein production due to the sheer effeciency of silkworms as a protein producer, compared to those others.
2) Conducting fibers that have integrated metallic ions and/or fiber optics
Exactly. Two pieces of info that todays PR were that Kim fully expects to still have this press conference (A lot of shareholders were uneasy about it being pushed back again so this is reassurance which i think is important).
And 2, it lets shareholders know that he is open to live questions from the media. Most of the ones who constantly hurl insults at Kim accuse him of hiding from answering questions. This is a big step and shows that he expects there to be media interest in what he's about to announce.
Some don't want to admit that during the week of March 19th, if you were talking about covid-19, then no one wanted to hear from you in regards to media. Anything announced would have fallen on deaf ears. Kim likely could have logistically held the conference on March 19th but it would have defeated the purpose of bringing in new eyes to the company. Covid-19 will still be the main topic on April 16th, but there will be a much better mix of different news, maybe some positive developments that increases market sentiment, and an exhaustion of constant bad covid-19 news cycle. It was the right call to postpone the call to mid April. Nothing would have broke through thee covid-19 news in march.
Hi Rayo,
I don't think we can definitively know whether that is just the plan, or whether or not it has been implemented already.
With regards to the 10k saying "We will provide" I think we have to remember that this is in the context of the time frame of this filing ending on 12/31/2019. Supplying eggs wouldn't be considered a material event that would need to be listed in the "subsequent events" section.
So we don't know, but it seems like this is the route they are going (at least maybe for monstersilk, and not dragon silk) so I'm not sure why they would delay the implementation considering the low overhead costs.
I agree, Sickzone.
I think it also implies that just because the prodigy facility is currently shut down till April, it doesn't mean the farmers who have received the silkworm eggs are shut down.
It reminds me more of Elon and SpaceX.
Elon's first 3 rockets blew up in his face. It was looking pretty bleak for spaceX for a little while. They kept forging through and now do multiple launches a year and are contracted to send up satellites and cargo to the ISS while they work on the ultimate goal of interplanetary travel.
Rockets had been made by plenty of other people with much more expertise in aerospace engineering than Elon. In fact, Elon knew almost nothing about rocket science before starting SpaceX. But he had the vision of a product and kept reaching for it no matter how many rockets blew up. Now sure, Elon had quite a bit more capital than Kim, but he was also working in a much higher pay-to-play arena then Kim is with silk. But at the same time, people thought Elon had a ton of cash on hand, but he didn't relative to the industry. Most of his net worth was tied up in the equity of his companies, but nevertheless he kept funding the company through the failures, even when he couldn't pay top notch engineers or recruit talent away from their secure jobs at Northrop or Boeing.
Now in hindsight, those rocket explosion taught his team very valuable lessons that lead to their ultimate success later on. But at the time, many people saw them as failures. It's easy to look back now and say "well of course SpaceX was going to succeed, reusable rockets are a game changer". But that wasn't the sentiment 15 years ago, except for the few people in SpaceX that really believed in the technology and process.
As for china, you can say the same thing about almost any product. China can knock off anything. But no reputable company in the U.S. or Europe (ie Nike, adidas, Patagonia, etc) is going to be able to purchase knock-off material and incorporate it into their product. Furthermore, China, in general, is extremely fearful of GMO's. In fact, some Chinese think that GMO's are a western conspiracy to cripple their crops and give them cancer. Any attempt to steal Kraig Labs tech and produce GMO silkworms in china would be met with a ton of backlash (even in a censored state).
And, no, everybody doesn't know what Kraig labs can do, or how they stably integrated the spidersilk gene into the silkworm genome in order to express it at the exact right moment. Thats why Kraig is having so many issues getting these patents issued. They are very adamant about keeping the process vague enough where other people can't exactly replicate their process once their patent application is published. I've read through all the patent applications, and all of the back-and-forth commentary between the company and the principal patent examiner. The examiner wants more and more clarity regarding the gene cassette but Kraig labs refuses to go into full detail. It is clear that Kim doesn't want to give away the secret sauce due to the lack of real protection patents actually give (especially in china), so he treats it more like a trade secret. It's evident that no one else has figured out what Kraig has done with spidersilk.
Some of the previous attempts by other scientists/companies were successful in producing spider silk, but not incorporating it into the structure of the fiber, that's why none of their threads showed significant mechanical improvements over regular silkworm silk. It's exactly why Randy lewis told all those VC's that Kim would fail at creating it. Now he's trying to figure out what Kim did with the help of Jarvis and Fraser. I think once production is up and running, they will finally give the examiner what she wants because they will at least have a production head start.
Sure, I'm pissed that there was a weather delay. I'm sure Kim and Jon are just as disappointed. But I don't see this as ultimate failure. I see it as Elon's first few rockets blowing up.
Something that I found interesting today that I didn't realize till now. I'm not sure if this was discussed as I didn't keep up with this board most of the summer.
This is from the July 14th PR:
I think it is interesting (and a bit silly) that the reverse split has garnered so much attention, and this misperception has done some real damage to the share price. I think it stems from a real lack of understanding between the share price of a company, and it's actual value.
Share price is a relatively arbitrary and subjective element that is only given any real value when tied to outstanding shares. In essence, it is just one variable in a two component math equation. Measuring just one of those variables doesn't give you the real value of a company. The more appropriate way to value a company is on it's Market Capitalization considering it is the product of share price and outstanding shares. Kraig labs currently has a Market Capitalization of ~$187 million dollars.
There are 3170 companies listed on the NASDAQ ranging from a market cap of $1.076 Trillion (Microsoft) to ~$4 Million (Cemtrex). If Kraig Labs were to list on the NASDAQ today, they would be ranked as number 1708 out of 3170 companies with regards to market cap. Beating almost half the companies on NASDAQ. So anyone saying that Kraig labs wouldn't "deserve" to be on the NASDAQ by adjusting their share structure is disingenuous.
If share price was the indicator of value, then you would have to assume that a company like Daily Journal Corporation (DJCO) which has a share price of $225/share is more valuable, and more worth it's position on the NASDAQ then, say, Intel which has a share price of $50. It turns out that DJCO has a market cap of $350 million, and Intel has a market cap of $229 Billion.
The point is, share price is not the best indicator of a companies value. 10 years ago Kim had to do a 10:1 forward split, likely to keep KBL's market cap above $10 million. Now Kim is reversing it to get it back closer to the old share structure. I have no problem with Kim doing a bit of housekeeping to get our share structure and price into compliance with NASDAQ. It does nothing directly to the market cap. It is solely the shareholders perception/misperception of the reverse split that effects it.
Nothing new here. Just about everything in this post should be known by everybody buying shares in publicly traded companies.
Hi Hope. Not trying to argue with you, and I definitely appreciate your contributions (especially from the ASM). I just wouldn't be suprised if the $4 comment was conservative to allow for fluctuations in share price. That was all I meant by it. :)